Washington D.C., April 1998 - NCITS (National Committee for Information Technology Standards) announces approval of this new project being developed within Technical Committee, T11, I/O Interface - Device Level. The reference number for this project is 1304-D.

This proposal recommends the development of a Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop - 3 standard. It is a requirement of this project that FC-AL-3 devices shall interoperate with devices operating in FC-AL-2 compliant mode. FC-AL-3 environments shall permit operation of FC-AL-2 devices. Included within the recommended scope of this project are:

1) Improved media access schemes;2) Other enhancements determined to be necessary by experience with existing implementations.

From 1997-2001, INCITS operated under the name Accredited Standards Committee NCITS, National Committee for Information Technology Standards. From 1961- 1996, NCITS operated under the name Accredited Standards Committee X3, Information Technology.